Geocaching Free for All: Garmin® Launches
OpenCaching.com

New online community makes it free and easy to create, find and share
caches

December 07, 2010 09:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

OLATHE, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), the
global leader in satellite navigation, today announced the creation of OpenCaching.com,
a completely free online community for creating, sharing and finding
geocaches around the world. An exciting and engaging outdoor activity,
geocaching combines exploration, education, entertainment and
recreation. At OpenCaching.com, everyone can enjoy all of the caches and
helpful information – the tips, descriptions, previous attempts, mass
downloads, etc. – for free.

“Garmin is extending its reputation for ease of use even further into
geocaching, creating the most intuitive experience possible,” said Dan
Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “By making it free
and easy to download every detail of every cache, Opencaching.com will
introduce more people to this great activity and show them just how fun,
easy and rewarding it can be. OpenCaching.com gives us a chance to go
beyond the development of hardware and software and interact directly
with the vibrant global community of cachers.”

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt where participants of all ages
explore the outdoors, hiding and finding containers of various shapes
and sizes that are filled with collectables, trinkets and logbooks for
signing in and letting fellow cachers know you were there. Creating a
cache consists of placing a container in a public area, saving the GPS
coordinates and uploading them to a website. Finding a cache is as
simple as searching the website and downloading those details to a GPS
handheld. As free and open as the great outdoors, OpenCaching.com was
created to help promote the growth of geocaching and build the worldwide
community of cachers.

The Awesome Factor

Continuing Garmin’s role as an innovator within the geocaching
community, OpenCaching.com gives creators and seekers alike a way to
quantify the “Awesomeness” of any given cache. While every cache has its
enjoyable elements that make it unique, everyone has personal favorites
that defy traditional descriptions. For that reason, OpenCaching.com
lets users rank the Awesomeness in addition to size, terrain and
difficulty. These four factors are displayed in a “bulls-eye”
illustration for each cache, giving geocachers a unique and vivid idea
of the fun that lies ahead. And cachers themselves can rate these
factors, turning the bulls-eye illustration into a true representation
of peer reviews.

Open to everyone

The strength of OpenCaching.com lies within the geocaching community,
from diehard cachers to families and classrooms trying it for the first
time (for which there is an informative how-to guide included on the
site). Everyone – regardless of experience or numbers of caches found or
placed – is welcome to the same information and invited to get as
involved as they want. OpenCaching.com will work with any device or
software package that can read GPX files, regardless of manufacturer.

“Because OpenCaching is brand new, we’re counting on cachers everywhere
to get creative and get involved,” said Bartel. “We want everyone who
posts, seeks and finds a cache to have the pride of ownership in this
new site, and there’s no better way than to build it together. As the
word gets out about OpenCaching, we expect the number of caches posted
to grow quickly.”

Through the recent announcements of OpenCaching.com and the chirp™
wireless geocaching beacon, geocachers around the world now have
exciting new tools to unleash the potential of their creativity. Garmin
is just one of countless businesses – large and small, corporate and
self-owned – that make up the interdependent geocaching ecosystem. From
collectables to events to software such as mobile, web-based and desktop
applications, these creative collaborations stimulate ideas and
enthusiasm. Garmin’s goal is to provide even more support and
opportunities to the various innovators involved in this global activity.

For cachers who have created or found caches elsewhere, Garmin designed
OpenCaching’s cache code system to seamlessly coexist and integrate with
other databases, devices and applications. Also, developers can access
the OpenCaching.com database through an API, and cache owners can share
their information on other sites through the Creative Commons license.
Cachers can quickly get credit for cross-listed caches found on other
sites and easily add existing caches they own to OpenCaching.com, where
they can also be tagged and enhanced with more helpful information.

A legacy of innovation

Since geocaching first began, Garmin has embraced the role of innovator
and leader. Garmin was the first company to offer open and closed
treasure chest icons on the screen of the device. Garmin devices
featured the first dedicated application with the “Geocaching compass,”
and the direct “Send to GPS” function started with Garmin. In
considering the environment – and ease of use – the industry leader
introduced paperless geocaching for increased efficiency and decreased
waste as users could see descriptions and helpful hints right on the
screen of the device instead of relying on numerous printouts for each
cache.

Garmin’s recently announced chirp wireless beacon is the latest
breakthrough in geocaching. Affordable, durable and waterproof, chirp
can communicate with, and be programmed by, any compatible
wireless-enabled Garmin handheld for a more interactive and enjoyable
geocaching experience. Cache creators and seekers alike will enjoy the
benefits as chirp stores hints, transmits multicache coordinates, counts
visitors and confirms the cache is nearby.

Garmin has spent more than 20 years developing technologies and
innovations to enhance users’ lives, becoming a household name in the
automotive, aviation, marine, wireless, outdoor and fitness industries.
For more about Garmin’s products and services, go to www.garmin.com,
www.garmin.blogs.com
and http://twitter.com/garmin.

About Garmin International Inc.

The global leader in satellite navigation, Garmin Ltd. and its
subsidiaries have designed, manufactured, marketed and sold navigation,
communication and information devices and applications since 1989 – most
of which are enabled by GPS technology. Garmin’s products serve
automotive, mobile, wireless, outdoor recreation, marine, aviation, and
OEM applications. Garmin Ltd. is incorporated in Switzerland, and its
principal subsidiaries are located in the United States, Taiwan and the
United Kingdom. For more information, visit Garmin's virtual pressroom
at www.garmin.com/newsroom
or contact the Media Relations department at 913-397-8200. Garmin,
GPSMAP, Dakota and Oregon are registered trademarks and chirp is a
trademark of Garmin Ltd. or its subsidiaries.

Notice on forward-looking statements:

This release includes forward-looking statements regarding Garmin Ltd.
and its business. Such statements are based on management’s current
expectations. The forward-looking events and circumstances discussed in
this release may not occur and actual results could differ materially as
a result of known and unknown risk factors and uncertainties affecting
Garmin, including, but not limited to, the risk factors listed in the
Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 26, 2010, filed
by Garmin with the Securities and Exchange Commission (Commission file
number 0-31983). A copy of such Form 10-Q is available at www.garmin.com/aboutGarmin/invRelations/finReports.html.
No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. Forward-looking
statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and Garmin
undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any
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future events, or otherwise.